Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

So - will PBUS be their 'state of mind' or what?

oh yeah i did ask that - yes they are experimenting much more sonically, synths and beats and so on, and excitingly i think aly said WALL OF SOUND

(and i asked them what their favourite song this year was - it was UMBRELLA-ELLA-ELLA-AY-AY-AY)

(also: in 10 years' time they are SO going to be the mega-rich songwriters behind whatever teenpop act needs songs in 2017)

Kara's of the future!

Whoah... Esmee sings Timberlake (wait 'til the end)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Grnh7Qin8

Uh, did anything more, er, controversial come up at all?

(xpost)

Never a truer word spoken by Justin there. (Also, I was completely distracted by the guy in the mirror during that vid.)

Lex - which publication *might* this be for? If you can say.

For any curious onlookers, Stylus Jukebox review of "Potential Break Up Song" is http://stylusmagazine.com/jukebox/?p=550 . Average score was 6.71, BUT it received a higher score from the teenpop denizens. (Do Martin Skidmore, Jonathan Bradley, or Hillary Brown post here?)

Thank you lex, this is what I wanted to hear!

Greg, if by "here" you mean the Teenpop thread, then no. If you mean on ILM in general, then ... Skidmore used to post on ILM a fair bit, but I haven't seen him around in the past year or two. Hillary Brown used to post very sporadically, but I think she's amenable to teenpop if threads entitled In Praise of... Pretty Ricky and Why hasn't Avril's "Together" been released as a single? are any indication. I don't think I've seen Jonathan Bradley here at all, unless he's using some screen name I don't recognize.

Also, this is what I said about PBUS, since the blurb got cut:

Having only been familiar with “Rush,” in which Aly & A.J. wail their wholesome little hearts out about the pangs of first love, I’m surprised at the cynicism here. Not only do they cheerily lash out and act petty like the privileged daughter of a British comedian, but they underscore their alienation by slathering their voices in AutoTune! I think I prefer the raw eagerness of “Rush,” but this song’s fizzy, go-get-‘em bounce does have a certain charm.

The Lily Allen reference might've been a stretch, i.e., she's obviously not the only singer whose relationship woes make her petulant in a chipper sort of way -- although I think she'd also be attracted to the title "Potential Breakup Song."

"Rush" is not about the pangs of first love, it's about drug use, as proved by Mr. Dabug

In relistening to it this morning, it also made me think of religious ecstasy: seeing the light and embracing Jesus.

<i>"Rush" is not about the pangs of first love, it's about drug use, as proved by Mr. Dabug</i>

Damn, I say some crazy shit sometimes. When'd I say that (I really don't remember!)?

Frank wrote a lot more about "Rush" on last year's thread, I think, and he was probably fairer to it than I was until I revisited Aly & AJ later in '06 (around the time "Chems React" came out I guess). I like A&A better when they really throw me for a loop, like in "I Am One of Them" and "Not This Year." They've got the wide-eyed intensity of Christian rock (that I've listened to) -- the overwrought ecstasy embracing Jesus-y stuff, but totally undercut by crippling self-doubt and a hint of skepticism (or general confusion). Needs more monkeys, tho.

Stupid tags. Jonathan posts over at Bedbugs occasionally, don't know if he's on ILM at all.

I could have sworn I saw you write that somewhere Dave but maybe it's an interpretation I just made up myself. I mean COME ON "Into your head/into your mind/out of your soul/race through your veins/you can't escape/you can't escape" - That just sounds like drug lyrics or early punk lyrics or something.

i'm pretty sure the averaged score should have been 6.85. um.

NO Ross that's 6.86 you fool!

OK, the Hilary video for Stranger is one of the most incoherent videos I've ever seen. Well, no, but seen lately. There is Hilary as "gypsy woman." There is Hilary as J-Lo. There is a dinner party. There might be nudity at one point (under the covers). I'm not sure what's going on. Actually, it looks like someone took a movie starring Hilary and mixed it up randomly over "Stranger" a la YouTube montage.

As an angst connoisseur I'm impressed that over in Jukebox an Aly & A.J. track entitled "Potential Breakup Song" could be seen as being insufficiently anguished in comparison to the duo's other work.

Also, though I obviously disagree with his rating, I like Jonathan's reference to Aly & A.J.'s "Stepford delivery." There is something strangely out-of-it - but in a good way - in the grain of their voices. I think it was Greg who once called the voices "pinched" and I'd add to that "steely" - they're not cold or inexpressive, but there's this hard, glinting tone that pretty much ensures they never could quite sound sentimental.

I think I'd have given it a 7, so 6.7 or whatever seems fair. I've listened to it quite a lot this week and I think it's a bit too fast, brisk, kind of yapping at me almost. On the one hand I like this - like they're hustling Mr Bad Boyfriend out the door, no time for ifs or buts or answering back. On the other hand I feel like they're hustling ME out the door with him and onto whatever the next track on my MP3 player is.

Also discussed over on Jukebox:

Lady Tigra

Jordin Sparks

The Reba version of "Because Of You."

Greg, is Jordin's studio version of "I Who Have Nothing" as good as her March AI performance? (I thought the March beat the May, 'cause in May the accompaniment got too ambitious with the strings.)

(And I'm meh on the Lady Tigra, which sounds strangely unemphatic. There are a couple of better tracks on her MySpace. And a couple of worse.)

And for those who don't know, here's The Rules Of The Game No. 1: Joining In, the first installment of what will be an ongoing twice-a-week column I'm writing for the Las Vegas Weekly. You're all encouraged to send me your thoughts on it (or post them there).

I'm all over the Lady Tigra one, I got a little over excited last week and listened to it about a million times!

FK, you can hear the recorded version of "I Who Have Nothing" here. I still prefer the March version, mostly because of the strings and that looooong note near the end...

Oh, and here's a song from some old Jordin demo with a slideshow of family pics.

Yeah, the "Stranger" vid makes no sense as a video for that song. The song goes "You treat me like a queen when we go out," and the whole point is the difference between the public warmth and the private callousness. Yet in the video he's not treating her like a queen in public, he's flirting with other girls or ignoring her, or acting pissy. The lyrics provided a great plot for a video; I don't see why they didn't follow it.

The video for LeAnn Rimes' "And It Feels Like" was a much better piece of breakup cinema.

Like It Or Leave It

Whoa whoa whoa. What's that about? I kinda hope it's not a relationship...

In their in-store performance they mentioned that they were doing a lot of playing around in the studio.

Maybe they're talking about THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Er...actually, I just came here to post about a nice power-teenpop OST for the upcoming Nancy Drew Soundtrack. Kinda digging the Joanna tune on there, "Pretty Much." Don't know if the Liz Phair song was on one of her post-Matrix albums.

Uh...who is Katie Melua? Voice sounds familiar...

Whoa! "She is, as of 2006, the United Kingdom's biggest-selling female artist and Europe's highest selling European female artist."

Frank, what do you think about the announcement that Pete Wentz is helping Ashley pen new songs for the new album?

*gasp*

The star was up for the role in "Mama Mia," an adaptation of the ABBA musical, but was unavailable because of prior commitments.

Simpson’s rep told In Touch magazine, "She was interested in the role, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out because she’s putting out an album."

So what, would she have been Agnetha or something? Or is that not what Mama Mia is? (It should be!)

Mamma Mia is a musical that uses ABBA songs to tell a story.

I find Katie Melua unbearably winsome.

(No idea why I thought it was a story about ABBA. It was huge on Broadway...I think all of my roommates but me have seen it!)

I have been anticipating the Nancy Drew movie for a long time, as it stars Emma Roberts and Kay Panabaker, who are two of my favorite current actresses, or at least two of my current favorite young female actresses.

I know one thing about Katie Melua, and that's that she does a cover of "Just Like Heaven" which is featured at the beginning of the (very underrated!) Reese Witherspoon movie of the same name. It's "not bad".

I absolutely cannot believe that this soundtrack features a cover of "Kids In America". That's at least the third teenpop cover of the song I can think of, and this is just off the top of my head. So Emma Roberts doesn't have any songs on the soundtrack, or they just aren't being streamed? I kind of like this "Hey Nancy Drew" song!

i'll raise tom's "unbearably winsome" with a "really fucking appalling and dull" re: melua. you can all have her.

i don't think 'stranger' is a very good choice of single at all :(

WHOOOOOAAA. I'm so going to the Missouri State Fair this year...American Idol tour/Corbin Bleu, Drake Bell & Jordan Pruitt/Counting Crows/Big & Rich, Cowboy Troy/plus two more big acts to be announced!

Omg, http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=esmeedenters.

Justin is right. Esmee does sing his songs better than he does. I'm smitten!

I have been listening recently to Kim Wilde songs that are not "Kids In America" - I hope some teenpopper rediscovers "Chequered Love"! Or "Cambodia" though it might need a title change ("Afghanistan" scans, come to think of it). Probably not any of the other ones ("Chaos At The Airport" is quite topical mind you).

OK, the new Kelly Clarkson single was released today, called "Sober", and can be heard on Kelly's Myspace: http://myspace.com/kellyclarkson

I haven't had a chance to listen to it properly yet; I'm at work. But it appears to be some kind of emotional ballad. I'm a bit surprised that they're just blatantly giving up on "Never Again" so quickly, but that's the biz I suppose.

My initial impression of "Sober" is that it is fantastic. I like it better than "Never Again", and I really liked "Never Again"

Forget the Karas of the future--the Kara of now is good enough. (1) She is working with Ashlee again, per her official site and this article in Billboard, which (2) makes me feel a lot better about her whole "This song is giving too much of the power to the man and it does not make me wanna la la," because apparently what she meant by that was (direct quote): "Dude, you are not writing that. You're a fucking hot bitch, and you are not begging for anything. These guys are begging for you." (Dave: I believe this means Kara is in favor of "My Humps.")

http://tommy2.net/2007/alyandajinsomniatic.jpg

I'm just going to quickly pencil this into my year-end ballot real quick...

er, LIGHTLY pencil it in real quick. Or quickly real light.

Reminder:

AMNIOTIC SIN, ANIMISTIC? NO!, INACTIONISM, MOSAIC INNIT?, I SIN INTO M*A*C, and SIMIAN TONIC are but a few of the alternate titles to this abum.

Come on use a pen DABUG, this is clearly going to be one of the ten best albums of the year.